The Barrow Cadbury Trust has welcomed the release of STUCK, a research report by Birmingham-based equalities think tank brap which draws on the voices of young people in the city to explore the effectiveness of current approaches to local gang activity.

The report, which was supported by the Trust, calls for proper evaluation of gang interventions in Birmingham, finding that lack of evidence about the results of long-term programmes such as mentoring make it hard to judge their effectiveness, leading to a reliance on schemes which focus on more immediate results, such as those focussed on gang dispersal.

STUCK calls for approaches to gangs which reflect the real experiences of Birmingham’s young people and directly meet their needs. It details the need for an understanding of the diverse reasons young people are drawn into gangs, including discrimination and inequality, calling for more to be done to consider these long-term structural issues.

Exploring the sensitivities and dangers of stereotyping in this highly politicised area, the report finds scepticism among young people about the willingness of agencies to tackle the underlying causes of gang crime and notes that for the input of former and current gang members into services to be meaningful, significant investment is needed.

Crucially, STUCK finds agencies in Birmingham can do more to share information – recommending a move away from reliance on only commissioning short-term schemes, at the expense of programmes which could reshape the lives of gang-members and improve community safety in the longer term.

You can read the full report online here.